A Crimean War Naval Brigade ‘Al Valore Militare’ group of six awarded to Captain J. G. Courtenay-Everard, Royal Navy; his ship’s mascot ‘Timothy the Tortoise’ survived until 2004

Crimea 1854-56, 1 clasp, Sebastopol, unnamed as issued; China 1857-60, 1 clasp, Taku Forts 1858, unnamed as issued; Legion of Honour, Knight’s breast badge, silver, gold and enamels, fitted with silver ribbon buckle, enamels chipped and damaged; Order of the Medjidie, 5th Class, silver, gold and enamel; Al Valore Militare, ‘Spedizione D’Oriente 1855 1856’ (Lieut. J. G. C. Evered, Nl. Bde.); Turkish Crimea, Sardinian issue, unnamed, fitted with silver ribbon buckle, unless otherwise stated, good very fine or better and a rare group (6) £3500-4000

Only 30 Al Valore Militare awarded to the Royal Navy for the Crimean War. The citaition states: ‘Served with the Naval Brigade upwards of eight months. Was present at every bombardment except the first, and on one occasion was wounded.’

John Guy Courtenay Evered was born in 1830 and passed his examination in May 1852. For his services as Senior Mate of the Queen 116, Captain Frederick Thomas Mitchell, in the attack of 17 October 1854 on the sea-defences of Fort Constantine, Sebastopol, he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant, 9 November following (Crimean and Turkish medals, Sebastopol Clasp, Knight of the Legion of Honour, 5th Class Medjidie). He was afterwards employed on shore for eight months in the Naval Brigade in the Crimea as Additional of the Britannia 120 and Royal Albert 121, bearing the flags of Admirals Deans Dundas and Sir Edmund Lyons, and as Lieutenant of his former ship the Queen. He was present at every bombardment of Sebastopol but the first, and was once wounded (awarded the Sardinian Medal for services in the Naval Brigade before Sebastopol).

He returned to England in the Queen under the command of Captain Robert Fanshawe Stopford in 1856. From 1857 until 1859 he served in the Princess Charlotte 104, Captain George St. V. King, Fury steamer 6, Captain Charles Thomas Leckie, and Nankin 50, Commodore Hon. Keith Stewart, on the coast of China, where he took part as Lieutenant of Fury in the operations of 1858 including the capture of the Taku Forts (China Medal and Clasp, Taku Forts).

He married, 24 August 1859, Gertrude Eliza, only daughter of T. Hay Nembhard, and had at least 8 sons and 2 daughters, with whom he appears to have emigrated to New Zealand, where they settled at Te Puke in about 1880 with a farm of some 200 acres. In 1887, he succeeded his father to the Barford Park estate, near Bridgewater in Somerset, and returned home to take charge. In 1904 he changed his name to Courtenay-Everard, before dying at the age of 100 in 1931. Shortly after his death The Times published an account of his remarkable life called A Centenarian’s Memories, form which the following extract is taken:

‘During the War with Russia, he served as senior mate of this vessel [Queen] in Crimean waters. He was present in the attack on Fort Constantine, and in other operations, as well as being landed with the Naval Brigade before Sebastopol. It was while he was in the Queen that he was promoted to lieutenant on November 9, 1854, and reappointed to the ship. “I was given my lieutenant’s commission,” he said on one occasion, in an interview, “for saving some women from the Cossacks. My captain told me to take two boats and such men as I wanted, and do our best. It was a tough job getting the women away from those rascals. They blazed away at us, and we had to lower the women into our boats by the hair of their heads in some cases. But we brought them safely away.” Captain Everard used to recall having met Florence Nightingale, “as good a woman as any living or dead,” when she one day, with a little band of followers, came up to the battery he commanded.’

Also sold with a copy of Timothy the Tortoise - The Remarkable Story of the Nation’s Oldest Pet, by Rory Knight Bruce, which chronicles the life of a tortoise taken from a Portuguese man of war by Captain Evered prior to the Crimean War. ‘Timothy’, who later turned out to be female, served with Evered as a ship’s mascot throughout the wars in the Crimea and China until Evered emigrated to New Zealand in about 1880, when he was passed to Captain Edward Rutherford R.N., finally living out his life at Powderham Castle in Devon where he died in 2004, aged about 160 years. The book also reproduces a small portrait of Everard in later life wearing his medals.